Lilith – Darkstalkers

Client: Personal

Date: 01 May 2006

I have wanted to make this costume for years and years! I loved the game series growing up, and I would love to make every single costume from the game. Most my friends shared a love for the game too, so for Animazement 2006 it was decided we would do a Darkstalkers skit. The idea behind the skit was to start off as an over-the-top drama skit (poking fun at this style of skit, and just hamming it up a bit) Then to bust out into Thriller! We had a lot of fun learning the Thriller dance, and the skit went over really well!

When I sat down to design this costume I really wanted to make sure that the wings could stand on their own and not have to hang on string like all the other Lilith costumes I had seen. I came up with the idea of building a corset under the bodysuit that could house the wings and support. I had to make sure it would work for both my costume and the Morrigan costume Lindze was making as we wanted to match. Her corset was tricky because there was so much less of it. Lindze made the bodysuit of my costume for me while I worked out the wings themselves. I made a few prototype head wings to figure out what we would need to do before making the large ones. In the end, I made them from a combo of wire, fabric, plastic and foam. They are coated in latex to give them a fleshy look and feel. I made the head wings first and soldered them to nuts that could attach to a screw in a headband under the wing. This way we could remove them to pack, or just brush out the wigs. In the end, my nuts didn’t hold up so I had to wire my wings to the headband. Lindze still has intact head wings, I guess I was just too hard on mine.

The big wings were tricky due to the size. I built the base, but it wasn’t like I could just dip them in the bucket to coat them like I did the head wings. So Lindze came over to help with the most comical/tragic costume day ever. We ended up with a baby pool that we set on tarps that we filled with latex. We knew if we spilled any it would be a pain to clean up, also it would never come out of our clothes. So we had to wear gloves and be careful. We dunked each wing and made sure to paint the latex on so it was even and smooth. We hung the wings and didn’t spill a drop… until we tried to pour the remaining latex from the pool back into the bucket to use for our Silent Hill costumes later. The pool gave way and the entire contents poured out all over Lindze, her shoes, the floor, EVERYWHERE! I think at that point we didn’t know if we should laugh or cry, so we laughed and set about cleaning up the colossal mess we had just made!

The tights and gloves were hand dyed by Lindze. She was dead set on getting just the right color, and after a few test stocking, she did just that! She also really wanted to make sure we made the bats with the eyes like in the Capcom art. A lot of people forget to give the poor little guys eyes. Lindze made a template and we cut out a ton of bats. I airbrushed the bats on Lindze with the help of Mikel, and Mikel airburushed them on me with the help of Lindze.

The boots we bought were matching pairs, but we had to cut them down. I ended up breaking the zipper on my left boot and had to replace both zippers. It was a pain, but the original zipper was black, and I think the boots look much better all red.

The feathers were another thing I wanted to make sure looked correct. We could find no feathers that looked just right so I had the idea to make them from scratch. Basically they were cut down from larger feathers, the spine was removed so they wouldn’t be still, and they were attached to ribbon as the new spine. This took forever and they were prone to breaking. Lindze has had to replace her feathers a few times due to the design of her costume and the long hair mucking them up. Mine have lasted, but look a little beat up these days.

Lindze was in charge of hunting the wigs. My first wig didn’t work out so well, but the second wig I got for this costume was ideal. She also tracked down the contacts for the costume. At the time they cost an insane amount of money, but we both wanted to make the very best costumes we could so we figured we had gone this far, might as well go all the way!

I am still very proud of this costume. There are only a few things I would like to redo on it, and who knows, maybe I will.